V2_ Knowledgebase

Christien Meindertsma explores the life of products and raw materials. For her first book, Checked Baggage (2004), Christien purchased a container filled with a week's worth of objects confiscated at security checkpoints in Schiphol Airport after 9/11. She meticulously categorized all 3267 items and photographed them on a white seamless background. Christien’s second book, PIG 05049 (2007), is an extensive collection of photographic images that documents an astounding array of products that different parts of an anonymous pig called 05049 could support. With this book, Christien reveals lines that link raw materials with producers, products and consumers that have become so invisible in an increasingly globalized world.

Eyebeam is the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States. Founded in 1996 and incorporated in 1997, Eyebeam was conceived as a non-profit art and technology center dedicated to exposing broad and diverse audiences to new technologies and media arts, while simultaneously establishing and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production

Thesis: This thesis consists of a series of extensive projects which aim to explore a new designer role for fashion. It is a role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a form of social activism. This social design practice can be called the hacktivism of fashion. It is an engaged and collective process of enablement, creative resistance and DIY practice, where a community share methods and experiences on how to expand action spaces and develop new forms of craftsmanship. In this practice, the designer engages participants to reform fashion from a phenomenon of dictations and anxiety to a collective experience of empowerment, in other words, to make them become fashion-able. As its point of departure, the research takes the practice of hands-on exploration in the DIY upcycling of clothes through “open source” fashion “cookbooks”. By means of hands-on processes, the projects endeavour to create a complementary understanding of the modes of production within the field of fashion design. The artistic research projects have ranged from DIY-kits released at an international fashion week, fashion experiments in galleries, collaborative “hacking” at a shoe factory, engaged design at a rehabilitation centre as well as combined efforts with established fashion brands. Using parallels from hacking, heresy, fan fiction, small change and professional-amateurs, the thesis builds a non-linear framework by which the reader can draw diagonal interpretations through the artistic research projects presented. By means of this alternative reading new understandings may emerge that can expand the action spaces available for fashion design. This approach is not about subverting fashion as much as hacking and tuning it, and making its sub-routines run in new ways, or in other words, bending the current while still keeping the power on.

Development and production of shape memory alloy products

London College of Fashion is the only college in the UK to specialise in fashion education, research and consultancy. We offer a unique portfolio of courses that aim to reflect the breadth of opportunity available in this vibrant industry.

In Making is Connecting, David Gauntlett argues that through making things, people engage with the world and create connections with each other. Both online and offline, we see that people want to make their mark on the world, and to make connections. During the previous century, the production of culture became dominated by professional elite producers. But today, a vast array of people are making and sharing their own ideas, videos, and other creative material online, as well as engaging in real-world crafts, art projects, and hands-on experiences. Gauntlett argues that we are seeing a shift from a 'sit-back-and-be-told culture' to a 'making-and-doing culture'. People are rejecting traditional teaching and television, and making their own learning and entertainment instead. Drawing on evidence from psychology, politics, philosophy, and economics, he shows how this shift is necessary and essential for the happiness and survival of modern societies.

News Knitter is a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data. The production of knitted garments is a highly complex process which involves computer support at various steps starting with the designs of both the fabric and the shape of garments until they are ready-to-wear. In recent years, technical innovations in machine knitting have especially focused on the patterning facilities. The patterns are designed by individuals generally depending on the current trends of fashion and the intended target markets and multiplied through mass production. News Knitter translates this individual design process into a world-wide collaboration by utilizing live data streams as a base for pattern generation. Due to the dynamic nature of live data streams, the system generates patterns with unpredictable visuality.

Smart clothes and wearable technology is a relatively novel and emerging area of interdisciplinary research within the fashion, textile, electronics and related industries. This book provides a comprehensive review of the end-userís requirements and the technologies and materials available for the design and production of smart clothing.

Since the label was born in 1982, the aim of Stone Island has been to design innovative top line collections in the sportswear panorama, with a high concern in function and use of the garments. Stone Island has undertaken innovative research into fibres and textiles never previously used in the clothing industry. The production procedures are often adapted from completely different industrial sectors and when applied to clothing, instead of standardizing production they produce unrepeatable garments.

A non-profit organization dedicated to developing textile creation in QuÈbec by providing top rate services in education, training, consulting, research, production, equipment rental, exhibition and sales. Textile creation using the most advanced technology available in weaving, knitting, embroidery and computer-assisted design. A staff composed of practising professionals who are experts in many different techniques and materials for textile production. A network of internationally leading artists and organizations. Consulted by researchers, artists and students from around the world.

From 1959 Tessitura Tele Metalliche Rossi Oliviero is a production company specialized in wire mesh weaved with threads from 0,035 to 2,00 millimetres. Always placing the technological search and the experimentation of new solutions to the first place it produces, trades and exports nets, wire mesh and welded nets with stainless steel, special alloys, galvanized, copper, bronze, brass, aluminium, iron, titanium and synthetic threads or ropes.

V2_Lab is a place for artistic research and development (aRt&D). V2_Lab develops generic technical solutions that are relevant to the fields of art and culture. The results are published and made available under open-source licenses whenever possible. In V2_ projects, artists, technicians and scientists work together to develop technology for specific artworks. Additionally, V2_Lab offers technical and productional support to artists working with new technologies. An artist-in-residence program is one means of achieving this.